I install 2014.5, looks fine. I see my garritan libraries are missing, so I download the entire gpo update that I didn't have, according to another thread. Still, none of the librairies appear and no playback other than 'through midi'. A couple of crashes later and an error message 'corrupt aria engine', I reinstall Aria, try a few more things like repair permissions, a few reboots. I give up and go back to 2014d that was already fairly buggy with MANY crashing events every session. I was hoping for a fix in 2014.5. oh well..

But here's the killer: now I cant get 2014d to playback either!

--os 10.9can't upgrade OS because I am running ProTools 11 on same computerI've been with Finale since the very beginning, and this is almost the worst...

It is a fairly common, but incorrect assumption that installing/reinstalling any Garritan library, except GIFF, which is bundled in Finale, will correctly interface it with Finale. No it won't. There is no strong connection with Garritan libraries and Finale. They can be used with other software, so there is no automatic interfacing with Finale, even though they are both owned by MakeMusic. You must download and install the support/auxiliary files from the MM website and place them in the proper location. Downloading may not be necessary if you already have the support files, but placing them in the proper directories is a must. In the instructions, replace any reference to F2014 with F2014.5 and you should be OK.

Thanks. Actually I needed to get the latest gpo, but none of my other garritan libraries showed up either. Updating Aria engine was the key to my problems, I think. Updating only the aria player was not enough, and figuring out that aria engine is a separate thing that needed updating was like pulling teeth.

This has at least fixed my 2014d issues:

"

Somebody said...(b) Now download and install the Aria latest engine currently v1.8.3. You will find this at:

ariaengine.com/support/aria-engine-update

There, you should see the Aria Player Engine updates. Just go ahead and download the latest version and install. Again, no need to uninstall any previous Aria Player, this will update and replace any existing engines

After many crashes and inconsistent behavior, I finally got the attached error message that gave me a clue.

Now I at least can fall back on 2014d. But I'm still trying to get 2014.5 to work.

I just had this problem. Garritan standalone installs an old version of the Aria player that crashes both Finales! So Wiggy's usually excellent advice is exactly reversed in this case.

Using your Finale 2014.5 installer, perform a custom install that ONLY installs the Aria Player. This newest version apparently is not supplied elsewhere. This solved the crashing problem for me. I had a bit of trouble identifying the Finale installer (I have a new computer with LOTS of programs to install!) but it is called MacDiskInstaller_2014.5.7098.0.dmg and I fortunately hadn't deleted it (it's a BIG download!)

Christopher Smith said...I just had this problem. Garritan standalone installs an old version of the Aria player that crashes both Finales! So Wiggy's usually excellent advice is exactly reversed in this case.Using your Finale 2014.5 installer, perform a custom install that ONLY installs the Aria Player. This newest version apparently is not supplied elsewhere. This solved the crashing problem for me.

Not sure I understand. There is no custom options to install only ARIA Player in the Finale installer. There is an option for Garritan (which includes the ARIA Player, of course), Fonts, Documentation, and a few other things.

If you have other Garritan products, then re-installing them AFTER 2014.5 may well install an earlier version of ARIA and cause problems.

My advice was that if Garritan and fonts were working for you in 2014, then don't bother re-installing them from the .5 installer.

But it will be interesting to know if other people who have crashes also have installed other Garritan products, and what versions of the ARIA Engine and Player they have.

Even the ARIA website does not have the latest versions that are installed with F2014.5. Definitely do not reinstall the ARIA player/engine with any Garritan library that includes them as part of the install. Opt out of the ARIA player/engine install. You will undo the F2014.5 install, which as Christopher reports, causes problems.

Christopher Smith said...I just had this problem. Garritan standalone installs an old version of the Aria player that crashes both Finales! So Wiggy's usually excellent advice is exactly reversed in this case.Using your Finale 2014.5 installer, perform a custom install that ONLY installs the Aria Player. This newest version apparently is not supplied elsewhere. This solved the crashing problem for me.

Not sure I understand. There is no custom options to install only ARIA Player in the Finale installer. There is an option for Garritan (which includes the ARIA Player, of course), Fonts, Documentation, and a few other things.

I just did it yesterday, and I was able to do it. I didn't have to do fonts, docs, nor instruments. Just Aria.

555 95472 said...I am not getting any of this. Finale 2014.5 deleted my 2014d. It is gone. How are you guys working with both? Did you have to reinstall 2014d after you did the .5 update?

I don't think so, both versions are on your computer in separate directories. They are separate programs and can be run concurrently. Installing F2014.5 replaced the MUS/X file associations to work with F2014.5, so if you double click on a MUS/X file expecting it to open in F2014d, it won't. Run F2014d first, then open the file within F2014d.

NickG said...Getting very confused.I want to update to 2014.5 from 2014d. I have Aria Player v1.620 and Aria Engine v1.620. Do I or do I NOT install Aria from the 2014.5 installer.

Just install Finale 2014.5 and everything as normal from the installer. All will be well. The newest Aria will be installed, which is what you need.

The problem occurs when someone (me!) installs the FULL Garritan Personal Orchestra or Jazz and Big Band (separate purchases!) AFTER installing 2014.5, and an old Aria player gets installed with it. THEN I had to go back and re-install ONLY the Aria player from my 2014.5 installer.

I just installed Finale 2014.5 and it does not contain any references to GPO4 in the MIDI/Audio->Sound Map Priority dialogs. Nothing. It does still show up in Finale 2014. A quick check of the Aria Player application shows it as "ARIA Player" in a folder called "Garritan Aria Player" and it has a create date of 4/9/12 (apparently, that's when I bought it...) and the date modified is today. There is NO version number indicated in Get Info. It is also set up to open in 32-bit mode, which makes sense if it is a 13-year-old application. (64-bit was very new back then...) The Garritan website lists the System Requirements as OS X 10.6 through 10.9. I don't see any references anywhere to Finale 2014.5 or to OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The website does, however, carry the "MakeMusic" header, so it is reasonable to assume (at least to me) that Finale and Garritan are joined at the hip.

So, Christopher, I automatically did what you are suggesting when I started this whole process; I installed Finale 2014.5 normally from the installer and I do not have any access to GPO4. I can still run it from Finale 2014c, which is what I had before and it appears to run properly in El Capitan. If I need a new version of the Aria Player, then so be it; if mine is 13 years old, then it needs to be updated. If I have to pay for a new version, then that's OK, too, as long as it isn't a zillion dollars. Software developers gotta eat, ya know.

I also looked at Charles Lawrence's post from back on 11/24 and fix all of the references to Finale 2014? (I seem to remember doing something like that some years ago when Garritan went goofy on me. (It was right after a Finale version update, not that I think of it...) I did check the version number by launching the player separately and then poking the "Settings" button, which revealed Version 1.846 (current), and that solved the mystery of the modified date in Get Info. So, learned ones, do I not need to update the Aria Player from the Garritan website as per the instructions in Charles Lawrence's post back on 11/24, but still must go through the rigamarole of fixing the references to Finale 2014.5?

I went back and looked at the previously mentioned "rigamarole" I had gone through a few years ago and looked for the appropriate references to Finale 2014.5 in "/Library/Application Support/MakeMusic/Finale 201x" to see if there were any references to Finale 2014.5, as there would have to be for GPO4 to work. Well, lo and behold, all of the expected folders were there and they all contained the same stuff as Finale 2014. There was a whole new set of folders under (you guessed it...) Finale 2014.5. The MIDI Device Annotation Folder and the Data Folder both contained the same files as the ones in Finale 2014, except for "Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.xml" in the MIDI Device Annotation Folder and "GPO4Full.soundmap" in the Data Folder. Well, I just put lil' ol' copies o' them files in the Finale 2014.5 folders where them boys belonged and now GPO4 works just like she's a-supposed ta.

So, the solution is actually simple and it makes sense. Apparently, the 2014.5 installer does not automatically propagate those files into the 2014.5 Library folders, probably because the users of GPO4 are a small subset. It probably just didn't get caught in testing. Since there was a pretty big to-do about compatibility with El Capitan that actually caused both a launch delay and made 2014.5 a complete clean version install instead of an update, that's the kind of little detail that could have been easily missed in the context of the much bigger compatibility issue.

Jeff, any new version of Finale comes with its own folders, and AFAIK, none of the installers copy over Soundmaps (or FANs, or plug-ins) from previous versions. You always have to do it manually.So, far from being a bug, that's standard behaviour.

ARIA should be fine if you installed Finale AFTER any other Garritan orchestras.

Wiggy said...Jeff, any new version of Finale comes with its own folders, and AFAIK, none of the installers copy over Soundmaps (or FANs, or plug-ins) from previous versions. You always have to do it manually.So, far from being a bug, that's standard behaviour...

If it was named Finale 2015 and was a paid upgrade, there would likely be little confusion on this point. Calling it 2014.5 does not convey the fact that it is a new version, at least as far as installation is concerned.

Point taken. The 2014.5 installer does create its own set of Library folders. However, the ARIA Player was automatically updated, thus leading to some confusion on my part regarding how "complete" the installation might actually be. But, you're right, it is installed in the same manner as a full new version and requires the same tweaking, which is well documented on the Garritan website.

MikeHalloran -

Apparently, 2014.5 was originally intended to be an incremental update to Finale 2014. Because some significant conflicts with El Capitan were discovered late in the update process, MakeMusic informed their users by email of the problem and instructed them not to update until they fixed the problems, if they were running (or planning to run) El Capitan. I was one of those people who was still running on Mountain Lion, but I had a few "legacy" applications that were said to be incompatible with El Capitan. It was a bold and admirable thing for MakeMusic to proactively tell its users not to update until they fixed the problems with El Capitan.

So, I waited. In the meantime, I loaded El Capitan on one of my MacBooks and proceeded to test all of my applications to make sure they worked. They all did (even a couple that I thought would fail and require changing to something else), so I was confident that Finale would, once the issues with El Capitan were resolved.

When the corrected update finally arrived, the installer made it very clear that this would be a full-on, complete installation and that Finale 2014 would remain on my machine and work as it had before. Both versions would reside on my computer side by side. (I even have both icons in the Dock.) The only detail that was left out was the placement of "Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.xml" and "GPO4Full.soundmap" in the appropriate Library folders. My hunch is that MakeMusic discovered that the El Capitan issues would be more complicated to solve with an update than it would be to bake the corrections into a full version installation. Calling it "Finale 2014.5" does make it somewhat different than a letter-suffix update, but it does leave the prior version intact.

I am not a software developer, but I've been around it a lot in my 30 years in the aerospace business before I retired. Finale is a pretty complicated product that does a remarkable job getting the enormously variable product of written music onto paper and into synthesized playback. On balance, I think MakeMusic handled this rather well.